Daily Reaction: PS4 Update 3.00 – Improvements the Console Deserves

August 21, 2015Written by Chandler Wood

Beta signups are now open for PS4 update 3.00, and we can assume this will be a big one, given the jump to an an entirely new whole number. With the tantalizing possibilities on the horizon, Daily Reaction is filling their daydreams with what they want when this next huge update releases on the PS4.

Chandler: I’m mostly happy with the PS4’s operating system, especially after update 2.50 and the awesome features it brought (I use suspend/resume daily). I mean, it allows us to play games, right? That’s what I use my gaming console to do. Play games. That’s not to say that there aren’t a number of things that I want changed about the system, and knowing that update 3.00 is on the way gets my mind running wild with potential improvements I would like to see in the OS.

There’s a couple of obvious ones, and I’ll cover those first. Organization on the home screen is hell. I’m often reviewing games, so I’ll constantly have games that I have to play for review pushing my other games and applications off of the main page. Allowing us to create folders to keep games in would be an incredible feature. I’d immediately create one called “Need to Play” where I would dump games that I have but end up falling into the deep abyss of my growing library, never to be played. I would create one for social games like Destiny and ESO. I would create one for review games. The organization possibilities have me giddy.

Of course, I couldn’t mention organization and not bring up that friends list. Come on, Sony! You increase the friends list exponentially, but don’t give us any way to organize it, and in fact, take away some of the functionality from the PS3 friends list. We need to be able to see when friends log on. We need to be able to categorize our friends in lists (friends, family, trophy boosters, etc.). I’m going to call out one great thing the PS4 has done with friends, which is the real name requests. Its a great start, but we really do need far better organization options for our growing friend lists.

Now I’m going to bring up my controversial one, and I know I’m going to get hell for it from some of our readers. Let’s see the social features expanded. Don’t make them overly obtrusive, so that those who just want to play games can still do that without the social functions getting in their way. For the rest of us though, sharing is important to modern gaming. Give us more options to share. Share our loves. Share our dislikes. Share our gaming. Maybe let us create our own wall on our profile, or follow other users so we can easily get notified of what they are playing or enjoying. There’s a groundwork in place here, but a ton can be done to improve and increase the social aspects.

Finally, I want to see increased PlayStation app connectivity with the PS4. We’ve previously talked about how incredible the Destiny app is for what you can do with it in real time, and I would love to see continued support and functionality with the PlayStation app. Perhaps they could apply some of those social functions that I mentioned, using the app to increase the sharing and networking between gamers? I wouldn’t mind a few surprises either, especially to do with Plus, and I’m sure they’ve got smarter minds than my own working diligently on bringing some awesome new things to update 3.00 when it does finally release.

Dan: To be perfectly honest, I don’t really think the PS4 needs much. As Chandler already said, it is a gaming console and that is its primary job, and that’s one it does very well. Certain options like being able to sort our friends list out would be a useful tool to help us sort out our friends, especially given the ability to now add up to 2,000 people. But the PS4 has a significant number of features already that could be utilized in differing ways that would add some more life to the platform.

PlayStation Now is a great concept, and the tech behind it is simply astounding. The ability to stream a complete game in almost no time at all begs the question as to why we don’t see the feature being touted on other aspects. Could you imagine the ability to stream a demo or beta instantly? We are already at the point where we are able to start playing games while they are installing, which has only reduced the gap between players and their experiences. By removing the gap between players and their ability to try new content could get them to try out more titles, and potentially push digital sales overall.

Social features are also something I continually see being utilized by Sony’s competition, but whenever they try it, it almost always feels like a false start. If we look at PlayRoom we can see that gamers are still using the title to let them stream themselves around the world. Why don’t we see something that cuts out the middle-man and gives that side of the community something real to play with, as well as implementing more meta tasks like we saw in the Twitch voting feature. This would give players more of a reason to interact with each other, and potentially get gamers to group up in fun and entertaining ways.

While I would love the ability to have a few new features here and there that would improve my experience, I think that Sony would profit more if they added things that expanded the console’s reach and capabilities. Sorting my bloated out gaming library would be plus, as would having DLNA support, but I am already enjoying the platform and its games, as are many of you. The idea of expansion would require attention to add things that are becoming more trend heavy, such as Vine capabilities and better Twitter integration, as those are major outlets for well organized mass distribution that has been only a growing part of our industry.

Overall, as I have already said, the PS4 is a fantastic console with a great number of possibilities, but the real thing that will need to be remembered is that this is a device geared towards gaming, and no matter what changes we see, I would hate to see anything get in the way of that. Gamers come in all shapes and sizes, so not all updates will be for everyone, but I think that is a fundamental thing we can all agree upon.